Vodun isn't effective medicine by our contemporary standards, but African cultures that enslaved men and women brought with them & maintained in the Americas included the knowledge of roots -- some of which is cast in ostensibly religious forms like Vodun. Before the rise of modern medicine -- say the invention & dissemination of antiseptics, anesthesia, vaccination, etc. -- white men's medicine had no claim to superiority to anyone else's.
Moreover, religious rituals, African roots doctoring, etc. served as cultural vehicles cementing bonds of communities of resistance. While African medical practice included some unsafe measures when judged by our modern standards, it also provided many practical benefits not only to blacks but also to some whites:
***** African American slave and free women also served as midwives and delivered the babies of both black and white women, and many were paid for their help (Joyner 1991:59; Lebsock 1984; Savitt 1978:182). Often, however, midwives used "unsafe" practices, such as packing umbilical stumps with mud or shaking women until they delivered the placenta. These practices, also common in Africa, were detrimental to the health of mothers and babies and were denounced by European doctors (Kiple and King 1981:171). Morton (1974:165) found midwife informants in South Carolina who, as late as the 1970s, still rubbed soot on a newborn infant's umbilical cord to "heal the cut."
On plantations where African American medicine was suspect or forbidden, it often survived in secrecy, and remedies were handed down to children and grandchildren (Savitt 1978:173). For example, one slave in Virginia in 1729 was given freedom in exchange for revealing his "secret cure for yaws and syphilis" (Savitt 1978:76; Wood 1978:52). On other plantations, African American medicine was recognized as effective and "the plantation herb doctor was not only encouraged by the slaveholder but at times consulted by him" (Kiple and King 1981:171). Goodson (1987:198) points out that African American women were often consulted by European doctors for information on plants and herbs to cure the diseases of both slaves and owners. These women imparted valuable plant knowledge to these doctors and the "medical news was rapidly disseminated throughout the newly-organized medical community of the United States...." (Goodson 1987:199). Sometimes European Americans relied directly on African Americans for medical treatment, as did a farmer and his neighbor in 19th century South Carolina; the neighbor was "cured by an 'old African' through 'conjuration'" and the farmer was cured when visiting another African doctor (Sobel 1993:67).
On the plantation, African Americans often relied on root doctors or conjurers to heal illnesses that were either caused or treatable by "magic" or spells, as well as by physical factors (Mullin 1992:185; Savitt 1978:174). Kiple and King (1981:173) point out that many illnesses thought to be supernatural "stemmed from vestiges of West African religious beliefs that lived on in the slave quarters." Treatments were often given "with many flourishes and charms to enlist the supernatural in buttressing the remedy" (Kiple and King 1981:170). Joyner (1991:59, 76) notes that charms such as dimes, or pouches of herbs, were often worn to prevent or treat illnesses or visits by unwelcome spirits. These treatments were often more successful than those of European doctors, who, while treating the physical manifestations, did little to address the psychological origins of illnesses (Kiple and King 1981:173). In many cases, beliefs in conjuring, spirits, and the supernatural existed in African American Christianity (Joyner 1991:77).
As discussed above, African American women often practiced herbal medicine on plantations, either in official or secretive positions. Wood (1978) demonstrates that African American women at times used their knowledge specifically for resistance. For example, African American women in South Carolina, to the dismay of plantation owners, practiced herbal abortion, infanticide in rare cases, and reportedly concocted poisons to resist domination (Hine 1979:126-127; White 1991:113; Wood 1978:52).
<http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/9412/ch4.html> *****
Even charms, spells, conjuring, etc. may have provided some unquantifiable benefits, in that they likely produced psychosomatic effects, especially the placebo effect caused by an idea that cure was being given.
Yoshie